The Konya Plain, part of the Central Anatolian Plateau, is an extensive basin at c.1000m altitude surrounded by mountains. Figure 18.1 shows the location of this region and the sites discussed. Alluvial fans have been formed by streams flowing in from the south and southwest. Çatalhöyük is a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlement located
in the centre of the large Çarşamba Fan fed by the Çarşamba River (Fig 18.2). At the time of the site’s occupation, the region was dominated by a semiarid regime with moist winters and summer drought (Hodder 2006:75-82).
Çatalhöyük overlooks the Plain (Fig. 18.3) and is approximately 140km from Mount Hasan
(Hasan Dağ), a volcano active during the Neolithic and which is visible from the site
(Hodder 2006:163; Düring 2013:24). The settlement, extending over 13.5ha, was inhabited for about 1,400 years. There are 18 occupation levels (I-XVIII, recent to earliest), of which VI-IX are Neolithic. Revised chronology for the stratigraphical sequence is 7300-6000 calBC, subdivided as follows: pre-Level XII to Level X, 7300- 6800 calBC; Levels VIII-VII, 6700-6500 calBC; Level VI, c.6500-6400 calBC; and Levels V-II, 6400-6000 calBC (Düring 2006:146). As less than 10% of the site has been excavated, Abraham (2013) considered current interpretations tentative.
Two adjacent sections of the site were occupied during different periods: an eastern mound, dating to the Neolithic (c.9400-8000BP); and a smaller western mound of the Chalcolithic (c.8000-7600BP) (Fig. 18.4). A channel of the Çarşamba River once flowed between the two. Regional surveys revealed that while there are earlier sites, none are clearly contemporary with its main occupation or of comparable size. It was quite isolated locally and had absorbed population from the surrounding territory (Düring 2013:36). When first occupied the settlement was located near springs adjacent to the
Çarşamba channel, on a small raised area within wetlands in the fan centre (Fig. 18.5). Seasonal flooding provided alluvium and backswamp clays in close proximity. Such nutrient-rich deposits would have been annually regenerated, supporting a wide range of foraged plants. The wetlands were also the habitat of a wide range of animals, including aurochs (Abraham 2013).
Three cultural horizons are identified. Deep sounding levels pre-XII can be assigned to the final Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) of Central Anatolia. Related deposits excavated are outside the settlement and no building remains have been found. While there was
evidence of lime burning, floors of this material are absent from the later building levels, suggesting that its architecture differed from those of the Pottery Neolithic (PN). Levels X-VI are assigned to the Early PN which differ in many respects from Late PN Levels V- I during which changes occurred in lithic industries, figurine typology and gender, and ceramic traditions. There were also changes in wall painting motifs, moulded features and installations; configuration of settlement space; value attached to building continuity; and the way in which social collectivities were constituted (Düring 2006:146-147).
Neolithic occupation of the site relates to Levels IX-VI. As houses were abandoned, they were infilled and new ones built on top with nearly identical plans. Excavation has revealed a site densely packed with mud brick and lime plaster housing extending into the unexcavated area (Figs 18.6, 18.7). It was a very large village, but did not have any administrative buildings and elite quarters; or specialised spaces, except those on the mound edge relating to lime burning and animal pens. (Düring 2013:23, 35-36).
Architecture was segmented into major blocks termed ‘neighbourhoods’ — residential zones in which households were embedded, with considerable face-to-face interaction and identified by their physical and/or social characteristics (Smith 2010:139). Düring (2013:33) has noted that ethnographic studies elsewhere in the American Southwest and Mesoamerica suggest it is an advantage to form such groups for optimal social economic co-operation. He considered those at Çatalhöyük to be dynamic and performing many rituals, including burial. For the exposed area of Level VIB, the neighbourhood included at least 30 households with a total of 150-250 people; any larger in face-to face contact would have been stressful. Neighbourhoods would have been linked in marriage, as it is argued that 500 people constitute the minimum necessary for successful biological reproduction (Birdsell 1973; Düring 2013:35-36; Wobst 1974). Düring (2013:34) saw the streetlessness and spatial organisation of neighbourhoods being designed to deter non-residents from entering, making the areas communal rather than public and
relatively autonomous. People would have defined themselves in corporate terms, with the behaviour of other residents being closely monitored. Neighbourhoods remained quite small to maintain social control (Düring 2013:33-35; Hodder 2006:109-140). Method of entry to the settlement is not clear, but the Level VI plan (Fig. 18.7)suggests the walls of the outermost row of buildings at the foot of the mound presented an unbroken line to someone approaching from the Plain. Hodder (2006:95) stated that no public spaces have been found, although site maps show open areas termed ‘courtyards’.
The house was of central importance, incorporating in one building all the functions expected in the different parts of a town (residential, industrial, religious and burial), but separated internally. It was the focus of social life, integrating symbolic and everyday aspects including cultic practices which made it both a ritual and a production centre (Düring 2013:24; Hodder 2006:91-140, 2009:19-20). Houses were agglutinated leaving only the rooftops as streets. Each was approximately rectangular in plan depending on available space, with loose adherence of terraced buildings in rows from north-south and east-west. Interior walls, floors and roof-supporting posts were plastered. There were no windows, and access was usually down a ladder or stairs set in the south wall of the main room. Single-storeyed, flat-roofed buildings were the norm, some with lightweight shelters. The rooftop was also used for additional storage; manufacturing, facilitated by the light available; and cooking, probably in summer. Roofs, therefore, would have been like courtyards, providing access to the building but with various goods and features to enable people to carry out a range of activities during the hottest part of the year. Furthermore, as people moved across these roofs to and from their houses, it seems that interaction within neighbourhoods must have been intense at times. People probably formed a social structure grounded in face-to-face interaction with others from various social positions. Refuse areas or alleyways served mainly to differentiate
neighbourhoods (Abraham 2013:23; Düring 2013:30-33).
Initial construction was carefully planned and ritually sanctioned, as seen in Building 1/Level VIB with three infant interments at the threshold to the main room, and in Building 40/Level VIII where the threshold between two rooms had been painted with red ochre. Despite agglutination, houses generally had their own walls. They were particularly standardised with a restricted size range of c.10-40sqm. The main room was used for living, craft activities, cooking, eating and sleeping (Fig. 18.8). It contained a hearth and ovens, and platforms. Several had small ancillary rooms used for food preparation and storage accessed through low openings. Variation in house size is mirrored by degrees of decoration (Düring 2013:29; Hodder 2006:109-140).
Lewis-Williams (2004:35) argued that platform construction within the ‘lower level’ realm of houses was a further expression of the cosmological verticality noted earlier, as well as the differentiation of males and females in mortuary practice. Moving between these sub-levels would have repeatedly reinforced social distinctions and place in that verticality, a point further emphasised by the placement of bucrania on step edges and roof columns.
Some houses had many internal spaces and special rooms with wall paintings;
mouldings, installations and other visual imagery; basins, pillars, posts, and benches (Figs 18.9-18.22); and large number of subfloor and platform burials (Figs 18.23-18.26). These features all related to ritual activity, their location conforming to community practice with respect to knowledge earlier houses, which was ideologically important. Mellaart (1967:77-78) argued that many houses, because of these features, should be interpreted as shrines, as they were devoted to cultic practices and over a long period (Fig. 18.27). Building 1, for example, was elaborately decorated with bucrania, paintings, posts, number of platforms, and mouldings; while Building 89, c.51sqm in area,had an estimated sequence of over 50 floors and a life span of 55-60 years. Categorisation of particular buildings in this way was considered incorrect by Hodder and Pels (Hodder 2010a:16-17; Hodder and Pels 2010:163) as all houses provide evidence of burial, symbolism and ritual, and domestic activity they were religious, social and practical, with some standing out within neighbourhoods as being larger and more elaborate, important and dominant. Current thinking views the latter as similar to those of house societies, symbols of group identity encompassing many households and which acquired greater ritual significance over time Hodder and Pels (2010: 163-186). These new and different high-status houses have been redefined by Hodder and Pels as ‘history houses’, accumulating more transcendent knowledge and symbolic capital than others; and may have become preferential sites for burial, leading to their dominance in relation to access to ancestors both physically and spiritually. Rebuilt at a slower rate than others, they were guardians of memory archives and responsible for establishment of long-term ancestry and routinisation of ritualistic practice.
In these houses, myths and symbolism related to ancestors were appropriated and transformed into history. Concurrently, the rate of change in symbols and meanings increased as social groups “competed” in their interpretation of it (Hodder 2006:164). The buildings represent a change in burial practice from one where interments took place within all houses and people apparently sleeping on platforms containing dead family members (Hodder 2006:24). Exteriors provide little indication of internal complexity; however, obsidian cores and finely worked pieces were concentrated in them, suggesting some preferential access to this raw material, and individuals possessing skill in working it (Abraham 2013; Bloch 2010; Düring 2013:24, 30-31; Forte 2015:8; Hodder 2005:137; Hodder and Pels 2010:163-164).
The main evidence for the ritual differentiation of history houses are numerous sub-floor burials, which are relatively abundant (Düring 2013:31). Building 1 contained 64,
whereas others had only a limited number, and about 80% none. The fact that deaths at Çatalhöyük would have exceeded known house burials, and that probably more people were buried in a neighbourhood history house than had occupied it during its life (Hodder 2006:24; 2010:2, 24) suggests that people from other houses were selected for special treatment in death. Burial practices were performed in history houses and considered appropriate for ceremonies attended by several households. Interment within these was only minimally related to biological affinity and may have been organised by ‘kin’ not defined in terms of genetic relationships, but rather a more fluid definition of ‘family’ (Düring 2013:31-32; Piloud and Larsen 2011:527-528).
In the Early Neolithic (EN), social patterning was related to neighbourhood communities in terms of co-residence and economic pooling. The site was characterised by
orderliness, including the careful regulation of activities and discard directed by taboos and long-term repetition. Organisation was based on collective and long-term memories, centred on material engagement with the house. A range of signifiers, such as wall paintings and reliefs or sub-floor and platform burials, provide markers of supra- individual identities. Dissociated from their original context and deprived of the
referential significance, these were given a different meaning in the Late Neolithic (LN). The significance of the house diminished during this period, its consecutive elements becoming dissociated from its original context. Houses were smaller, composed of a series of cell-like spaces surrounding a larger ‘living room’ lacking symbolic decoration monumental installations. Intramural burials were replaced by dedicated burial chambers with elaborate decoration constructed above the place where bodies had been interred; and the traditional spatial arrangements of the house with northern ceremonial and southern domestic zones that appear to have been strictly respected in earlier periods were abandoned. The significance of spatial repetition as a social practice was still apparent with fire installations being constructed in the same spot between a hearth and the central oven. The wall images transformed into decorative motifs on pottery and other portable objects, while bodies were also interred in extramural cemeteries (Hodder 2006:135; Marciniak et al. 2015:173-174).
Houses in use for many decades abutted those used for a much shorter time. This required reformulation of social, economic and ceremonial linkages between people living in buildings of different temporalities. It further required re-definition of the social fabric of life at the settlement, in particular the ways in which the inhabitants of an individual house were integrated into a broader community, such as those of
neighbourhoods or extended households. As the different materialities and temporalities of individual houses manifested the character of the task-focused groups who lived there,
they also reflected the nature of rapidly changing nuclear households in terms of the regimes of acquisition, production, consumption and reproduction. The period also marked a change in regional occupation with the appearance of many smaller sites in the surrounding area (Hodder 2006:135; Marciniak et al. 2015:173-174).
18.1 ARCHAEOLOGY: DISCUSSION AND INTERPRETATION 18.1.1 Settlement
Settlement permanence is evident throughout the occupation levels, the agglutinated site pattern being maintained with durable construction, and repeated building on the same location. Banning (2003:6) associated the well-constructed houses with fully sedentary
settlement. The Carşamba River ensured a reliable water supply while associated marshes gave access to a wide range of resources, including fish, waterbirds and terrestrial animals. Pockets of alluvium and backswamp clays above flood level were suitable for agriculture (Hodder (2006:77-79).
Baird (2005:67) has argued that initially Çatalhöyük represented the clustering of a group of previously dispersed small communities; and as it grew it became largely
endogamous, a strategy to enhance resource control. Its population of 5,000-8,000 can be contrasted with small Neolithic sites in the wider region such as contemporary Erbaba c.100km to the southwest with an estimated population of 190–285 (Düring 2013: 23, 36). Those communities would not have exceeded face-to-face limits whereby everybody knew each other and were similar in scale to a Çatalhöyük neighbourhood. This suggests that each of the latter was like these village communities, and that the site overall represented the concentration/implosion of a regional settlement system within a single unit. During its heyday it may have incorporated between 27 and 53
neighbourhoods (Düring 2013:36).
Formal planning is apparent in the standardisation of house construction, internal spatial use, and refuse management. Further conformity is evident in the house-floor caching of obsidian, and specific styles of its manufacture (Hodder 2006:104, 246).
18.1.2 Ideological
social control/co-operation/organisation Hodder (2006:74-75) questioned what had attracted people to create such a dense, overcrowded community in streetless conditions at Çatalhöyük; and why they were using the landscape so extensively, both symbolically and as a resource. With subsistence not being an issue, the main reason appears to have been ideological, a view to which Hodder (2010a:18-19) later subscribed. Ideology was
part of everyday life; it was domesticated. Houses were actively about imagining, remembering and interacting with previous ones in the same location (Hodder 2010a:17, 22-23, 274).
The myths of Anatolia and the Middle East were reset at Çatalhöyük, appropriated by individual history house-based groups. In this way, as these progressed toward becoming corporate bodies, they reproduced themselves through transmission of names, goods and rights, the myths and related symbolism were attached to house ancestors as well as family and clan histories. Construction of continuous memory would have had the effect of holding a house-based group together while allowing social differentiation. This suggests variation in power within the community related to ability to construct histories (Hodder 2006:164-167).
house construction This was carefully planned to a set design and ritually sanctioned to cater for ritual practice. Much centred on remodelling, repainting, and retrieval from earlier occupations, and the deposition of clay and plaster reliefs and sculpture. Thresholds were emphasised by red ochre, and both human neonates and animal parts placed as foundation deposits. Multiple replastering of walls and platforms associated with burial zones indicate ritual practice. Construction, abandonment, minor rebuilding and even the simplest action involved ritual, all activity having to be carefully managed and sanctioned (Hodder 2006:80, 109, 117-119, 127-129).
ancestor worship As mentioned, the remains of earlier occupants have been found in house sub-floor pits, particularly beneath hearths, in main room platforms and under beds. A number of graves had been disturbed and skulls removed, some being plastered and painted with ochre to recreate faces. Disarticulated bones suggest exposure in the open air before interment and/or secondary burial. Mortuary rituals, therefore, focused on honouring ancestor burial and death imagery. This is evidenced in retrieval of human skulls, their re-use and handing down through the generations in the context of ancestor linkage (Fig. 18.28). Affiliation through inheritance of such objects would have been effective in creating social units and linking neighbourhood households, but also establishing social distinctions between them. Such burials meant that ancestors were ever-present, readily identifiable, and intruded into daily life, this accentuated by visual imagery and installations. It was important to display affiliation and memory, hence the need for skulls, and the retention of objects associated with ancestors (Hodder 2006:25, 55, 58, 147, 179).
In-house burial made it possible to associate particular memories with specific people. Different categories of people were placed under specific platforms in houses, and the
distribution of art and symbolism respected those spatial divisions (Hayden 2004:265- 266, Hodder 2006:17, 61,137, 249). Special treatment is evident with the arrangement of the headless body in Building 6, unusually laid out with a cloth and a plank over the torso. Items of personal identity or status recovered from graves include miniature green stone axes, polished maceheads, stamp seals, and obsidian items (blade bundles, daggers, knives, projectile points and mirrors (Figs 18.29, 18.30). Two elaborate flint daggers (Fig. 18.31) have carved bone handles, one a boar’s head, the other a snake (Hodder 2006:50-52, 246). These are thought to have played a part in ritual and ceremonial confrontation of wild animals; and in the processing of human flesh, such as with skull removal (Hodder and Meskell 2011:249).
shamanistic behaviour Noting the prominence of the ‘wild and the dangerous’ in visual imagery and underlying ideological concerns, Hodder (2006:29-31) recalled Bataille’s (1955; 1962) argument linking violence, sex and death. Bataille thought that each involved movement away from the real world of everyday experience, assisting humans in coping with the tensions of social life by creating a sense of timeless unity that could be ritually used to create social bonds and commitment. He also noted the Bloch (1992) view that ritual often involved inversion, resolving matters in some ‘other world’. This was concerned particularly with initiation, the way in which symbolic ‘killing’ of initiates is followed by progression to a new stage of life. Such violence is considered a necessary part of the movement into another world, transcending the natural processes of birth, growth, reproduction, ageing and death. The vitality gained on return from this state is often obtained from outside beings, usually animals. Hodder considered the Bataille and Bloch arguments to fit “remarkably well” with Çatalhöyük art demonstrating definite shamanic overtones such as the killing and disarticulation of shamans during trance